Analysis of Shooting Consistency in Archers: A Dynamic Time Warping Algorithm-Based Approach

Abstract

The shooting consistency of an archer is commonly perceived to be an important determinant of successful scores. Four (<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"><mml:mi>n</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>4</mml:mn></mml:math>) elementary level archers from a middle school in Korea participated in this study. In order to quantify shooting consistency, movement of the bow forearm was measured with an inertia sensor during archery shooting. The shooting consistency was calculated and defined by the dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm as the distance between two time sequences of acceleration data. Small distance values indicate that the archer has maintained high-level shooting consistency while archery shooting repetitively. To verify the shooting consistency metric, the relationship between scores and shooting consistency is evaluated. The results show that the higher the scores achieved by the archer, the higher is the level of shooting consistency demonstrated.